There has recently been an increasing interest in the application of manufacturing techniques common to the electronics industry, such as photolithography, wet chemical etching, etc., to the microfabrication of fluidic devices for use in obtaining chemical and biochemical information.
The manufacture of fluidic devices in solid substrates, e.g., silicon, glass, etc., was described as early as 1979, with the disclosure of the Stanford Gas Chromatography (discussed in Manz et al., Avd. in Chromatog. (1993) 33:1-66, citing Terry et al., IEEE Trans. Electron. Devices (1979) ED-26:1880). These fabrication technologies have since been applied to the production of more complex devices for a wider variety of applications.
To date, the most prominent use of this technology has been in the area of capillary electrophoresis (CE). Capillary electrophoresis typically involves the injection of a macromolecule containing sample, e.g., nucleic acids or proteins, into one end of a thin capillary. A potential is then applied along the length of the capillary to electrophoretically draw the materials contained within the sample through the channel. The macromolecules present in the sample then separate from each other based upon differences in their electrophoretic mobility within the capillary. Such differences in electrophoretic mobility typically result from differences in the charge and/or size of a compound. Other factors can also affect the electrophoretic mobility of a given compound, such as interactions between the compound and the capillary walls, interactions with other compounds, conformation of the compound, and the like.
Capillary electrophoresis methods have traditionally employed fused silica capillaries for the performance of these electrophoretic separations. In more recent applications, this fused silica capillary has been replaced by an etched channel in a solid planar substrate, e.g., a glass or silica slide or substrate. A covering layer or substrate provides the last wall of the capillary.
Early discussions of the use of this planar substrate technology for fabrication of such devices are provided in Manz et al., Trends in Anal. Chem. (1990) 10(5):144-149 and Manz et al., Adv. in Chromatog. (1993) 33:1-66, which describe the fabrication of fluidic devices and particularly capillary electrophoresis devices, in silicon and glass substrates.
Although generally concerned with the movement of material in small scale channels, as the name implies, capillary electrophoresis methods employ electrophoresis to affect that material movement, e.g., the movement of charged species when subjected to an electric field. While providing significant improvements in the separation of materials, these capillary electrophoresis methods cannot be used in the direction of bulk materials or fluids within microscale systems. In particular, because electrophoresis is the force which drives the movement of materials in CE systems, species within the material to be moved which have different electrophoretic mobilities will move at different rates. This results in a separation of the constituent elements of the material. While this typically is not a problem in CE applications, where separation is the ultimate goal, where the goal is the bulk transport of fluid borne materials from one location to another, electrophoretic separation of the constituent elements of that material can create numerous problems. Such problems include excessive dilution of materials in order to ensure complete transport of all materials, biasing of a transported material in favor if faster electrophoresing of species and against slower or even oppositely electrophoresing species.
While mechanical fluid direction systems have been discussed for moving and directing fluids within microscale microfabricated pumps and valves, these methods generally require the use of costly microfabrication methods, and/or bulky and expensive equipment external to the microfluidic systems. Accordingly, it would generally be desirable to produce a microscale fluidic device that can be easily and cheaply manufactured. The present invention meets these and other needs.